September/October 2003

Loyalty Can Be Rewarding

New Web-based tool measures, rewards constituents for actions online

Almost everyone appreciates the power of creating loyalty among constituents. Development professionals, for example, can easily calculate the bottom-line impact of donor retention. Increasing retention rates by even a single point usually translates to a significant growth in dollars raised, and typically costs much less than acquiring new donors. The same "loyalty effect" holds true for other interactions with constituents.

A constituent who takes multiple actions on behalf of your organization -- such as making a donation, signing a petition, and referring a friend -- is an extremely valuable asset. The challenge is: how do you foster this kind of behavior?

Convio Rewards^TM is a new online tool for measuring constituent involvement and rewarding those supporters who take additional actions. Using Convio Rewards, an organization can assign points that correspond with different online actions -- for instance, responding to an action alert may be worth 10 points, while making a donation could be worth 30. As constituents take action online, they accrue more points. They can view these points, and redeem them for gifts or other incentives. This loyalty marketing technique -- pioneered by consumer marketers -- can be a powerful tool for nonprofits.

Convio Rewards allows nonprofits to measure constituent involvement
and reward their strongest supporters.

Convio Rewards can be used to cultivate additional gifts and to increase gift size: by earning reward points for each donation, donors are encouraged to make multiple gifts. An organization also can designate how many points a donor receives per dollar donated, and adjust point levels to encourage the desired behavior.

Of course, organizations value non-monetary support as well, and can use Convio Rewards to stimulate other forms of support. An organization that engages in online advocacy, for example, can award points each time a constituent responds to an action alert. And, some of the most valuable constituents are those that extend a group's reach and impact by spreading the word to their personal networks -- a practice known as "viral" marketing in the for-profit world. For nonprofits who use Convio Rewards, their constituents can accrue points every time they forward an email link from the nonprofits' Web site. Convio Rewards enables organizations to recognize these non-monetary types of support while extending their reach to new constituents.

Convio Rewards is part of the Convio suite of online tools designed to help nonprofits create relationships online and drive results. For more information about Convio Rewards, visit www.convio.com/rewards.